In a report released by Strategy Risks, Michigan State University (MSU) is shown to have maintained long-running partnerships and person-to-person ties with Chinese institutions involved in domestic and international propaganda and public-opinion management.

MSU partners with the Communication University of China (CUC) through a dual-degree master’s program in International Digital Advertising. CUC describes itself as an important “base” for Party propaganda and ideological work and has links to laboratories focused on public-opinion analysis and cognitive-domain research. MSU faculty and programs have also engaged with Chinese domestic and external propaganda officials and universities working in areas such as digital media, artificial intelligence, and information warfare.

The report finds that these relationships create research-security and dual-use risks because communications, audience-analysis, data, and AI expertise developed for civilian or academic purposes can also support censorship, propaganda, influence operations, and military applications. MSU has operated for years within an institutional ecosystem where universities, Party propaganda bodies, and military-linked entities overlap. As a result, MSU’s academic expertise and institutional credibility may be helping strengthen capabilities used by the Chinese government to shape information environments at home and abroad.

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